Dispatches from California Institute of Integral Studies.

December 04, 2012

Exploring the Encounter between Buddhism and Western Psychotherapy at CIIS

By KAISA PUHAKKA, professor in the Clinical
Psychology Department at CIIS

Recent
decades have seen a fertile encounter between Buddhism and Western psychology.
Unique among religious and spiritual traditions, Buddhism does not have a
theology or beliefs of any kind as its foundation. In its 2,500 year history it has taken root
in many countries and possessed an amazing capacity to adapt to rather than
oppose the cultural mores and beliefs of its host countries. But none of these
mores or beliefs is essential to Buddhism. For example, many but not all
Buddhists accept re-incarnation, karma, etc., which were prevalent beliefs in
the early host countries. As much as we know of the historical Buddha, he
counseled his disciples to not take any teachings on faith—not even his—but to
verify their truth in direct personal experience and observation. It is this
insistence on verification in direct observation, along with the concern with
alleviation of suffering, that naturally aligns Buddhism with Western
psychotherapy. Cognitive-behavioral
psychotherapy has indeed taken advantage of this alignment in widespread and
successful adaptations of mindfulness meditation for managing stress, chronic
pain, anxiety and depression.

But
there is so much more to Buddhism than these simple adaptations. Buddhism has
big ideas that reach through your innermost self all the way through the vast
cosmos —like pratityasmutpada or the interdependence of all beings, or sunyata,
the no-thingness or voidness of reality. And they are not just ideas but
something to be realized in the immediacy of one's experience. I once asked a
famous mathematician at a Zen monastery about the secret of his apparently
inexhaustible creativity (he was 50 then). He said, “It's about being closest to
my true self. You know, of course, my self is nothing at all,” he smiled and
described how when sitting in the Zendo, mathematical forms spontaneously arise
out of the void (sunyata). He had been sitting through sesshins
for 24 years when I came to my first. Something coming from nothing—true
creativity!

No
Western psychology is big enough to fully contain these ideas, but we have
bigger containers that could do more than symptom-focused cognitive-behavioral
psychology—like psychodynamic psychotherapy, which considers the whole person
and all of the psyche including the unconscious. It is indeed heartening to see
the door being slowly cracked open in contemporary psychoanalytic circles not
only for meditative techniques but for deeper inquiry into the self. Like Buddhism, psychodynamic psychotherapy is
concerned with alleviating suffering and also believes in disciplined
self-inquiry and dispelling of illusions as key to liberation from suffering.
In both, the inquiry is carried out in a formal relationship—between student
and teacher in many forms of Buddhist practice and between patient and
therapist in psychodynamic psychotherapy. There is enough common ground between
the two traditions to meaningfully explore some of the vast differences that
are there also. I believe it is in the dynamic tension of these differences
that new discoveries and developments will take place, both for the grounding
of Buddhist practice in Western cultural soil, and for awakening the spiritual
soul of psychodynamic therapy.